I know your kid SAYS he or she wants to marry you. But mine really, really wants to. He’s got it all planned out. We’ll be married, (although he says I can still stay married to his dad), and we’ll live together forever and ever. And if he wants to get married to someone else and have kids, that’ll be okay. We’ll all live in a house together and be happy… ever after.

He really loves me. I know your kid SAYS he or she really loves you. But mine really, really does. He kisses my hand and tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me I’m the best mom in the world. I know your kid says the same to you, but Garrett really, really means it.

We’re going to live in a big, beautiful house. I’m going to cook him all his favorite foods. Any silly face I make will send him, even at 40-years-old, into a fit of giggles so pure people will be watching it on YouTube for years to come. His wife will love me and tell me all the time that she wishes she could be half the woman I am. The grandchildren will secretly tell me they wish I was their mom. In our old age, he will treat Russ and I like a king and queen. And as I lie comfortably dying, in a long white, cotton gown, Garrett will once again grab my hand and say to me, “Mommy, I love you more than anything in the whole world. You have been the best mom anyone could ever, or will ever have. Now, go to heaven knowing that you have loved, and you are loved, completely.”

Then I’ll float away and he will cry with all of his heart. His wife and children will console him, all of them missing me more than anyone has ever thought humanly possible.

The end.

Okay, I get it. Your kids say the exact same things to you. They look at you like you hung the moon and they tell you they want to live with you forever. I know it’s their age. I know it’s a phase. And I know they mean it with every fiber of their being.

But, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to pretend that I’m the only mommy in the world whose son loves her enough to marry her. And I give you permission to do the same.

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Poppy!! I was hoping someone would mention that!
While I do not currently wear white cotton nightgowns (or really anything else whit because I would spill coffee on it, for sure), it just seems like the perfect, ethereal thing for a classy 103-year-old woman to die gracefully in. Doesn’t it??
And, I’m hoarding medications for the day G doesn’t want to do a 30 minute waving goodbye routine at school.

Oh just wait. Kate is going to be 13 in less than two months. I am going to be the mom of a teenager! Gone is the little girl who held my hand and threw her little body around me in the biggest hugs and brought me everywhere because I was the best mommy ever and she wanted all her friends to see how great I was.

No, no, no. That child has disappeared. She had been replaced with a young lady, almost as tall as me, with a cute tush and actual breasts growing on her tiny body. She gets her period! She wears makeup! She talks to boys!!! And she constsntly tells me to shush, to stop, to wait in the car, to not say anything dumb to her friends, to stop being so weird.

But, there are fleeting moments, when she is not trying to be so damn cool, that I see her. I see my little girl. When she hugs me without remembering that she’s too cool for that and stiffens up and flounces away. When she looks me right inthe eye and tears up because she knows I am her mommy forever no matter how old or cool she gets. When she asks me for something that she is sure I will say “NO” to, like when she asked me to cut the neck out of her $40 sweatshirt so it would hang off her shoulder, and I said, “Sure, let’s do it!” When she is sad, or tired or has PMS and I say nothing but sit beside her and she leans her girl-trapped-in-a-woman’s-body self up against me and we just stay that way until she has the courage and strength to pull back into her own world again. I love those moments. I live for those moments. I cherish those moments.

And then I cry, because I miss the frequency of those moments.

And then I smile, because my little girl, not yet a woman, is so precious to me, and I know that she knows that I love her more than my own breath.

The man who chooses my daughter to marry, the man my daughter chooses to allow to marry her, better be an amazing man with an amazing mother. Because I want to hold that mother’s hand as our children join their lives together, severing themselves from ours, and cry with her and laugh with as we watch, bittersweetly joyful, as our babies slip away together.

My six year old tells me he just loves me too much. He wants to marry me. When I told him that mothers can’t marry their sons, he cried his eyes out. So I told him he can marry me when he’s old enough. Although it’s cute and sweet, I really hope he changes his mind when he’s older lol…. Just last night I told him that I’ll be almost 60 when he’s old enough to marry me. He started crying again and said, “But when you’re 60 you won’t be pretty anymore!” My husband and I just had to laugh!